Saturday, April 23, 2016

A little less than two years ago
I wrote about Chrysi Avgi (Golden
Dawn), the Greek political party which barely masks its veneration of Hitler
and his blame-spewing hatred that brought such horror to the world.

At the time I mentioned the serious criminal charges
lodged against virtually every one of the party’s then eighteen members of
Greece’s parliament following the murder of
a Greek by Golden Dawn supporters, yet its popularity has continued to rise
and in the most recent general election Golden Dawn ranked third in votes
received—while its leader and other members waited in jail to be tried as a
criminal organization masquerading as a political party.

So what else has happened since I wrote the piece on May 24, 2014?Yep, you guessed
it. Tipota.Nothing.It’s as if the prosecution is afraid to lose, the defendants are afraid
to be judged, and the judges…well, it’s Greece.

With
jackboots battling socialists for power in Europe, and immigrants the targets
of animosity on all sides, Greece just seems to want the trial to go away.

It was
billed as Greece's ‘trial of the century' when it started a year ago, with
assurances that, despite the country's notoriously slow judicial system, the
trial would be over in 18 months. This was the sensational trial of 69 Golden
Dawn members, including their leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos, on charges of
running a criminal organization. The case file of charges against them ran to
over 30,000 pages.

The leader of the pack.

The first court
session took place exactly a year
ago, on April 20, and was immediately adjourned, setting the tone for a trial
marred by delays, inefficiencies, and lately a lawyers' strike which has seen
no court sessions take place at all since January 12 this year.

The
trial that initially had the public and the media enthralled soon fell off the
news agenda as more pressing issues vied for the public's attention. In the
year that's elapsed, it gets a passing mention if at all, and almost always in
the context of courtroom dramas rather than the gravity of the charges brought
against a political party currently serving in the Greek parliament.

It was
the death of a Greek left-wing rapper, Pavlos Fyssas, in 2013 which finally spurred the authorities into
action after a string of attacks on immigrants by Golden Dawn members. His
murderer, Giorgos Roupakias, was held for the maximum possible time for
detention without charge under Greek law and released into 24-hour house arrest
last month under the shadow of a trial that is going nowhere fast.

According
to one of the prosecution lawyers, Thanassis Kampagianis, the trial proper only
began in September last year. "In reality the court has been going on for
four months if we talk about the court the way people understand the court, not
procedural matters, not the lawyers fighting over these things," he told
DW.

The constant interruptions from
the defense side struck many as a deliberate delaying tactic to bore the public
and the media into losing interest, a point Kampagianis agrees with. "It
is obvious that the strategy of Golden Dawn is to have as little publicity as
possible. There have been incidents inside the courtroom that reveal that this
to be the case, threats against journalists and photographers and even physical
violence against a journalist," he said.

The
glacial speed of court proceedings, at one point stalling over the lack of a
projector to show video and photographic evidence to witnesses, has frustrated
many of those involved, and the solutions reached often come across as nonsensical.

"Something
like the projector needs to be decided by court, you can't just bring your own.
The court decided that we will first have the witnesses and then we will be
able to project the videos, which in the prosecution's opinion is a wrong
decision," says Kampagianis.

Then
there was the issue of the location of the trial in Korydallos prison, a
location with poor public transport connections and away from the public eye.
The prosecution has petitioned for the transfer of the trial venue to a more accessible
location in central Athens, which is still an ongoing issue.

To add
to the delays, lawyers in
Greece have been on strike for the last three months in protest of the government's proposed pension
reform laws. Kampagianis explains that the Athens Bar Association (DSA) allows
the strike to be broken for extraordinary cases. They denied such permission
for the Golden Dawn trial.

Lawyers on Strike

Stressing
that he and the other prosecution lawyers support the strike and have no
financial incentive for the strike to end since they are working pro bono,
Kampagianis said "My view is that the DSA responded with formalities, not
the crucial issue, which is that you have an extraordinary case where you have
a criminal organization that has perpetrated all these crimes, masquerading
itself as a political party inside parliament. This is an extraordinary case,
it's very dangerous for the democratic system, for political and human rights,
so there should be a response to the magnitude of this case."

In a
cafe near the enormous grey Korydallos prison, Chrysa Papadopoulou and Andreas
Tzelis, both prosecution lawyers for the Fyssas family, explain how the family
is holding up in the face of the delays. "They are disappointed with how
events are evolving, or rather, not evolving," Papadopoulou told DW.

"This
trial concerns all of Greek society, not just the loss of the Fyssas family.
They are determined that to see this trial through to the end," adds
Tzelis.

The DSA
could not be reached for a statement.

Eleftheria
Koumandou, a journalist for Golden Dawn Watch and Athens 98.4 FM, said that of
the 132 witnesses in the trial, only 16 have so far given evidence. "We consider
the Golden Dawn trial a very important trial and the outcome will have
immediate consequences for the social and political life of the country. We
consider it a basic point that witnesses need to be supported, especially the
migrants coming to testify against this organization. They need to get justice
in society, not just in the courtroom," she told DW.

The
Golden Dawn defense team responded to DW's requests for an interview by saying
that they are not making any statements until the trial concludes.

With
talks between lawyers and the government in a deadlock, it's anyone's guess
when the trial will resume. In the face of ongoing economic uncertainty and a
burgeoning refugee crisis, Golden Dawn are resuming their prior activities.
Last week, Golden Dawn supporters at an anti-immigration
rally in Piraeus attacked
anti-fascists and a journalist, allegedly in full view of riot police who did
not intervene.

*****

So, what’s going to happen next?

Perhaps we’ll have to wait until my new book (Santorini Caesars) comes out in
September to find out.:)Let’s hope not.

11 comments:

OK, Jeff, all fun aside, this is deadly serious and an outrage. Golden Dawn is so incredibly dangerous, like the German Brown Shirts whose fascist gangs beat up and killed people who were Jewish, dissidents, workers on strike, people demonstrating, etc.

It's ridiculous that the government either fears prosecuting Golden Dawn members or doesn't want to rock the boat and set off more right-wing violence.

Two friends of mine who follow events in Greece said when these neofascists were arrested -- that nothing would happen.

To allow this criminal pro-fascist group to intimidate people, even lawyers and judges, is just the opposite of what needs to be done.

It's like the growing pro-fascist National Front in France which is allowed to carry out violence and spew its anti-immigrant, Islamophobic venom as they spouted anti-Semitism until recently -- although they still mean it.

Pavlos Fyssas was a popular rap musician. He was killed brutally by a group of Golden Dawn gangsters. They should go to jail for years and the government should exert control over the group.

This is disappointing. There are so many kind, generous Greeks helping the migrants. I'm sure their numbers are much greater than the far-right's.

I hope the courts clamp down and convict them and I hope enormous demonstrations, as in France and Germany, too, and other countries, support the migrants and oppose theneofascists. That is urgently needed.

I've read this is happening in Germany with good folks marching and countering the far-right. This is the time.

Finally, a tale more ridiculous than our Presidential elections in the US, where one candidate speaks of banning certain people from the country and building fences with neighboring countries. Your comment, "Hope seems to be eroding across the planet" holds very true!

I think Bernie Sanders' supporters have hope. Where will that hope go once the conventions happen?Will their hopes be dashed or will there be another movement continuing to press for what his campaign's program is about which many people believe in?

If it's reasoned hope, one trusts that Bernie's supporters recognize that the next president will deeply affect their generations' futures far beyond a presidential term in office...because the Supreme Court will be reshaped by our next president. And vote accordingly.

Well, young people do have hope and optimism. Once things become business as usual and colleges cost a fortune, student debt piles up, good jobs are hard to find, housing costs are high, wars continue, and police brutality and bigotry continue, what will these young people do?